Happy Halloween to all of you, Sam Boydstun here to deliver another development update on Builder's Brawl, the fighting and building game being developed at Chico State Game Studios.  This period has been a big turning point for the team as we have finally completed many of our features and are busy implementing them into the game. We are happy to announce that after this next two week period we will be feature complete, and its an odd feeling to be nearing the end of production in a months time or so. Polish and bug fixing is in full swing and we are all very excited to present our game in the upcoming Independent Games Festival. 

The Ragdoll Finale

As the team moves towards being feature complete, a big feature off our back was the finalization of the ragdoll physics in the game. As announced last development period, we had implemented it in player to player interaction and now we can say we have brought it in everywhere else. Environmental effects, like the snowball being thrown at the player above,  now employ ragdoll to finish off the feel. Fireballs will burn the player to a crisp and lightning will cause them to fall down in shock. Rushing rivers will sweep players away as they flail and sandstorms will whisk them away as they fail against the wind. 

Even in the simple interactions of players leaving the playing surface, we have now have ragdoll. Overall this massively improves the feel of our game and changes from a model just translating downwards with no lifelike interaction, to a believable, fun to look at, dying builder.

The User Interface Remake

A big focus on the polish of the game was the reconstruction of all of our user interface and the idea that in its original state, clarity was not presented to the players. A huge overhaul is in process to solve many of these issues of game play that were not clear to the players when they were playing. We have learned that just because its fun doesn't always mean it totally makes sense. The completed part of the user interface I can present now is our "Universal UI."

Every professional game we studied had at least some concept of an overarching user interface. Things that we noticed were specific to each were the visual aspects of their "boxes." A simple options screen usually has something on the corners, the heading at the top, and in the middle on sides. We took these basic aspects of design and implored our 2D art team to create a universal style that we could use across the game and that represented our theme. From that, we made pause menus, loading screens, buttons, arrow indicators, and end screen boxes that will show players who is winning and who is sadly losing. These end screen boxes will be on full display next development blog. 

A Frosty and Fiery Completion - The Levels

As we near the end of development, we are also very excited to announce that some of our levels have come to their final state. We believe that you may be quite surprised to see the jump between the before and after photos and its been a real pleasure to see the fruition of our work. In each photo the small photo on the bottom left is what the level looked like before we began our second phase of work. 

The volcano level underwent a complete rework of the volcano itself and it's lava to give a better more visually stimulating look. Because of the change to the lava we were able to bring our bloom to a greater degree and have the level really bask in the heat.

Our snowy mountain level underwent an overhaul on both the water and the icebergs that were used as obstacles for the level. We also added grass and other effects to the trees to make the level feel more alive when the player interacts with the environment.

The Board Conundrum 

After our second play test on Builder's Brawl we realized we had an issue. Players could not tell that there were three different sized boards  nor why the pile of boards was getting smaller. Even as our play testers thoroughly enjoyed our game, they did not fully understand what was going on. To institute alittle more clarity, we settled on new board colors and new board piles.

Our first goal by making different sized board piles was to give players the visual cue that as they removed boards from the pile, the pile would get smaller till it was just empty scraps. Furthermore we found that by coloring the different boards with new colors, players would quickly pick up on the idea that "dark brown = more points, light brown = less points." Some simple fixes to an overall glaring clarity issue. 

The Team Builds Forward

Thank you from everyone here on the Builder's Brawl team for reading our development blog 9. It has truly been a journey for all of us here and our first real adventure on polishing an existing title. As we move to be feature complete here in two weeks time, we are very excited to share with you the updated state of our game and how it has grown over the course of the semester.

We will be providing an updated build of the game to the Independent Games Festival, where we are competing for Best Student Game, on November 10th. We believe we can definitely give some others a run for their virtual money.... plank by plank. 

-The BB Team.